Newsworthy Science

This is just shocking, I had to post:

Pregnant women in the United States die by homicide more often than they die of pregnancy-related causes — and they're frequently killed by a partner — according to a study published last month in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Researchers revealed this grim statistic by using death certificates to compare homicides and pregnancy-related deaths across the entire country for the first time.

There were 3.62 homicides per 100,000 live births among females who were pregnant or within 1 year postpartum, 16% higher than homicide prevalence among nonpregnant and nonpostpartum females of reproductive age (3.12 deaths/100,000 population, P<.05). Homicide during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy exceeded all the leading causes of maternal mortality by more than twofold. Pregnancy was associated with a significantly elevated homicide risk in the Black population and among girls and younger women (age 10–24 years) across racial and ethnic subgroups.
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Writeup Paper (paywalled)
 
researchers are a step closer to dementia/Alzheimers vaccine

by mimicking the hairpin shape of a certain type of plaque protein the vaccine teaches the body to remove it

trials in mice improve memory
 
Probably this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01385-7

There's a less technical piece on the Alzheimer's research site, but it doesn't go into much detail. It looks like they are targeting a different section of the amyloid peptide than usual, using both an active vaccine, and passive synthetic antibodies. The results in animals look promising - but we've been here before, so I'm not going to get too excited until I see similar results in humans. There's a large question mark over the whole amyloid hypothesis for good reasons, after there have been so many failures from targeting it.
 
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MrCynical said:
Probably this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01385-7

There's a less technical piece on the Alzheimer's research site, but it doesn't go into much detail. It looks like they are targeting a different section of the amyloid peptide than usual, using both an active vaccine, and passive synthetic antibodies. The results in animals look promising - but we've been here before, so I'm not going to get too excited until I see similar results in humans. There's a large question mark over the whole amyloid hypothesis for good reasons, after there have been so many failures from targeting it.
Click to expand...
That would be amazing if they could figure out a vaccine for Alzheimer's. I wonder how the risk profile of that pays into the anti-vax mindset? Separately, I wonder how this plays with the blood brain barrier. They can make antibodies to get through it, but this sounds like it works with intravenous injection of the antigen.
 
Half of the World’s Coastal Sewage Pollution Flows from Few Dozen Places

An analysis of fecal pathogens and nitrogen in the oceans from ~135,000 watersheds globally found that about half of the nitrogen pollution to just 25 locations and that around half of the pathogens also came from 25 sources, in some cases the same ones.

Our model indicates that wastewater adds 6.2Tg nitrogen into coastal waters, which is approximately 40% of total nitrogen from agriculture. Of total wastewater N, 63% (3.9Tg N) comes from sewered systems, 5% (0.3Tg N) from septic, and 32% (2.0Tg N) from direct input.
​
m52A8YQ.png

Global distribution of total wastewater N.

A) Global map of the terrestrial sources (green to blue) and coastal diffusion of inputs (yellow to purple) of total wastewater N, measured in log10(gN) in both. Coastal plumes have been buffered to line segments to exaggerate patterns to be visible at the global scale. Insets show zoomed-in views of the B) Ganges, C) Danube, and D) Chang Jiang (Yangtze) Rivers, showing wastewater plumes at high resolution.

There is a cool Open Street maps overlay of the data here, which I guess could be of use if you are planning a beach holiday.

Paper Writeup
Spoiler What is going on with the Pass A Loutre State Wildlife Management Area :
The SA says the Mississippi is a bad one, so I looked at it and it looks like all the sewage comes from a nature reserve?

xXRIOdO.png
 
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Samson said:
This is just shocking, I had to post:

Pregnant women in the United States die by homicide more often than they die of pregnancy-related causes — and they're frequently killed by a partner — according to a study published last month in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Researchers revealed this grim statistic by using death certificates to compare homicides and pregnancy-related deaths across the entire country for the first time.

There were 3.62 homicides per 100,000 live births among females who were pregnant or within 1 year postpartum, 16% higher than homicide prevalence among nonpregnant and nonpostpartum females of reproductive age (3.12 deaths/100,000 population, P<.05). Homicide during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy exceeded all the leading causes of maternal mortality by more than twofold. Pregnancy was associated with a significantly elevated homicide risk in the Black population and among girls and younger women (age 10–24 years) across racial and ethnic subgroups.
​
Writeup Paper (paywalled)
Click to expand...

Huh. My first thought was actually that I hadn't realized our turrible turrible women's health has maternal mortality so low it's under the homicide rate*. That helps perspective a lot.

*for women, no less.
 
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Some new discoveries from the famous Miller-Urey Experiment.
It's so bloody obvious, why did none of us bozos think of it?
 
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.acx9639
Services Clean up brigade

Hyenas are considered unattractive and feared by some, but they are charismatic in unexpected ways, not least because of their vocalizations but also because of their liking for discarded human waste. Sonawane et al. investigated the contribution that hyenas make to waste cleanup in the Ethiopian city of Mekelle. This city has inadequate organized waste collection, causing a significant public health risk. Over 40 nights, Mekelle’s 200 or so hyenas consumed all of the animal waste available in the city’s landfills. This equated to about a metric ton per year per hyena. These activities were estimated to reduce anthrax and bovine tuberculosis transmission to humans and livestock by about 4%, saving approximately US $52,000. Rather than vilifying hyenas, we should welcome their attention and optimize their scavenging opportunities.
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:lol: nice.
 
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694
Question Can a psychological treatment based on the reappraisal of primary chronic back pain as due to nondangerous central nervous system processes provide substantial and durable pain relief?

Findings In this randomized clinical trial, 33 of 50 participants (66%) randomized to 4 weeks of pain reprocessing therapy were pain-free or nearly pain-free at posttreatment, compared with 10 of 51 participants (20%) randomized to placebo and 5 of 50 participants (10%) randomized to usual care, with gains largely maintained through 1-year follow-up. Treatment effects on pain were mediated by reduced beliefs that pain indicates tissue damage, and longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging showed reduced prefrontal responses to evoked back pain and increased resting prefrontal-somatosensory connectivity in patients randomized to treatment relative to patients randomized to placebo or usual care.

Meaning Psychological treatment focused on changing beliefs about the causes and threat value of primary chronic back pain may provide substantial and durable pain relief.
Click to expand...

Or in short: In 33/50 patients they managed with psychological training to make back-pain with unknown causes go away, in contrast to 5/50 on opiods.
Really impressive.
 
The_J said:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2784694


Or in short: In 33/50 patients they managed with psychological training to make back-pain with unknown causes go away, in contrast to 5/50 on opiods.
Really impressive.
Click to expand...
Doubly impressive as the psychological training does not sound very intensive:

Participants randomized to PRT participated in 1 telehealth session with a physician and 8 psychological treatment sessions over 4 weeks. Treatment aimed to help patients reconceptualize their pain as due to nondangerous brain activity rather than peripheral tissue injury, using a combination of cognitive, somatic, and exposure-based techniques.​
 
It seems like a superorganism that covers the entire continent that takes a big breath every couple of years

Stroll the sidewalks of the eastern United States this fall and you might think you’re walking on ball bearings, as a bumper crop of acorns rolls under your feet. Pine and spruce drip with cones, and rafts of maple seeds twirl toward the ground. This is a mast year, in which tree species reproduce prolifically and in sync, creating a bounty that will reverberate through the ecosystem for years.

Researchers have tried to explain masting for decades. They have noted, for example, that by overwhelming mice, squirrels, and other seed predators, masting helps ensure that at least some seeds survive. Other scientists have suggested fluctuations in nutrient availability and even sunspot activity might trigger it.

Davide Ascoli, a forest management ecologist at the University of Turin, is exploring a once-ignored idea about its trigger: that masting occurs in years when seeds are likely to have favorable weather for sprouting the next spring or even in the next year or two. It’s not that trees have crystal balls. Instead, researchers suggest trees are alert to large-scale, long-term climate patterns, which can cause, for example, wet weather one month and dry weather months or a year later.
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I7WCbXL.png
 
How to hug, according to science

Researchers have tried to study what makes one hug better than another in experimental and real-world settings and found that hugs that last five or ten seconds are rated as more pleasurable than a single-second squeeze. And a ‘crisscross’ style in which each hugger places one arm over the other hugger’s shoulder is the preferred form of hugging, especially in men.

Also, not until the plague is over :nono:
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_20211118_on_hugs_secondary.jpg

A crisscross hug on the left and neck-waist on the right
 
World's First Living Robots Can Now Reproduce, Scientists Say
The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals. CNN reports:
...
The research was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/29/americas/xenobots-self-replicating-robots-scn/index.html
 
Ferocitus said:
World's First Living Robots Can Now Reproduce, Scientists Say
The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals. CNN reports:
...
The research was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/29/americas/xenobots-self-replicating-robots-scn/index.html
Click to expand...
So what is it that makes it a robot?

"Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study.
"In that way it's a robot but it's also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell."
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If that is the definition is a sheep dog a robot? What about a HeLa cell?
 
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